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From: daveb@geac.UUCP (Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Amdahl's Law
Message-ID: <1441@geac.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Sep-87 07:57:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: geac.1441
Posted: Tue Sep 22 07:57:26 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Sep-87 07:19:59 EDT
References: <11370002@hpsmtc1.HP.COM> <483@hubcap.UUCP>
Reply-To: daveb@geac.UUCP (Dave Collier-Brown)
Organization: The little blue rock next to that twinkly star.
Lines: 21

In article <483@hubcap.UUCP> fpst@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Stevenson) writes:
>in article <11370002@hpsmtc1.HP.COM>, swh@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Steve Harrold) says:
>> If there is some dispute as to how accurate Amdahl's "Law" is, shouldn't
>> it be more properly labelled "Amdahl's Theorem"??
>
>Properly, it isn't a theorem unless done with some axioms, etc.  How
>about "conjecture" or "thesis."


  Er, I think Gene was stating an emperically verifiable fact.  In
sicence, these are usually called "laws" (like the law of gravity) and
theories and/or conjectures about them are called "theories" (like the
Newtonian theory of mass attraction, aka gravitation).  Darned if I
know what a Theorem would be in science... maybe a theory without a
law, but with a rigorous proof?
  --dave (terminological inexactitude) c-b
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.                 {mnetor|yetti|utgpu}!geac!daveb
 Geac Computers International Inc.,   |  Computer Science loses its
 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, |  memory (if not its mind)
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